Historically, voice, video, data, and other services have been provided separately, using multiple facilities and separate wiring. As a result, communities requiring such services have usually faced relatively large initial expenses for implementing a system, subsequently increasing system capacity, and maintaining the system on an ongoing basis. Attempts to integrate such services to offset these inadequacies have typically forced users in these communities to accept a number of undesirable limitations, for example, limitations as to the generality of data services available.
Communications needs continue to expand on a global scale. With the growing demand for communications, and despite the limitations associated with prior systems, there is a concurrent expansion in the demand for audio, video, data, and other services provided to user communities. This is particularly true considering the recent rise in importance of packet-based audio, video, data, and other communications that rely on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Internet Protocol (IP), Frame Relay (FR), and other packet-based protocols. For example, users in a community such as an apartment complex or other shared tenant environment may have telephones, personal computers, facsimile machines, and other devices allowing them to interface to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), the Internet, and other suitable networks. Previous systems do not provide voice, video, data, and other services in an integrated manner using a system having relatively low implementation, scaling, and ongoing maintenance costs. As a result of these and other inadequacies, previous systems are often inadequate to address the current and future needs of many user communities.